


I Built You A Staircase to Heaven With Pieces of Myself

by beware_of_fangirling



Series: Destiel One-shots [21]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Awkwardness, Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, more fluff than I usually write, my sons are awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 23:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8422732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beware_of_fangirling/pseuds/beware_of_fangirling
Summary: Based off a prompt from the winner of my fanfic giveaway: After Dean got back from he'll he feels like part of him is missing. Whenever he is around cas this feeling disappears. It turns out that when Cas put Dean back together he left part of his grace I'm Dean and parts of Deans soul are now apart of him. Cas has to explain this to him when Dean awkwardly mentions it! Is it possible to make it quite fluffy?





	

Heaven had sent Castiel into the pits of Hell with one mission: find Dean Winchester and bring him back. No one else had wanted to take the job, all thinking it a fool's journey. Very few people had ever left Hell before, and none who had been there for as long as the Winchester. Why would they even want to bring him back? He had brought this upon himself, trading his soul for his brother's life. To bring him back would be to meddle in the natural order of things, something they tried to avoid as much as possible. Still, whispers filled Heaven of a greater plan structured by their father, and it involved Dean Winchester.

So they sent down Castiel, and he went willingly, though a bit numbly if he had to admit it. After all, what did he care for this man? He was only a mission.

It wasn't difficult to locate him after Castiel had entered Hell. The hunter's soul seemed to call to him like a beacon, shining brightly through the throngs. When he finally reached Dean Winchester, all that was left of him were dull green eyes and a knife in his hand. He had adapted to survive in this new, cruel environment. His soul was beaten, battered, seemingly broken beyond repair. Castiel approached him, and Dean looked at him as if he were nothing more than the next victim. When the angel told Dean that he was there to save him, he snorted and told Castiel to save himself.

He left, and went back to the officials in Heaven, telling them it was a mission destined for failure. They told him to try again. He begged for them to let him off the hook, for how could he save a soul that didn't want saving, that enjoyed being the monster it had made itself into. They brought forth no answers, simply ushering him back to those daunting gates.

He went back to Dean, and told him that he had been ordered to save him. Dean looked at him skeptically again, but this time offered no rebuttal. So Castiel collected the fractured pieces of his soul and started to put him back together, like a jigsaw puzzle. The only problem was that some pieces didn't fit the way they used to. Some were missing, some were changed, some were new. In the end, he was left with green eyes and a Frankenstein soul that didn't work yet.

So he placed his hand on Dean Winchester's shoulder and glued the pieces of him back together, filling in all the cracks and gaps with his own self until Dean stood the proud and strong hunter he once was. Then he gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.

|D|O|S|

There weren't any forthcoming experts on the field, but Dean assumed that when a person came back from Hell, they didn't come back exactly the same. He assumed there was supposed to be _something_  missing, or different at least, because, you know... hell. 

So he just assumed that when he came back feeling not quite right, it would fade with time. Maybe as he reunited with Sammy, got back to hunting, worked to regain his own, convoluted standard of normal, he would feel whole again.

But he didn't.

Until two barn doors blew open and some stupid, messy haired guy in a trench coat walked in and declared, piercing Dean with eyes that were just too blue to be human, that he had brought him back to hell. As soon as he set eyes on this man who claimed to be an angel, Dean had felt... _whole._  For the first time since he had been back, nothing was missing anymore.

The angel left and took with him that feeling of completion. But Dean ignored it. He was pretty used to always having something wrong with his life. He pushed it to the back of his mind, telling himself there would be time for deep, sappy introspection when there wasn't a world to save, knowing perfectly well there would always be a world to save and being content with staying in denial for the rest of his life. He became so accustomed to the feeling of something being missing that it became his natural state.

Still, every time he came across that nerdy little angel with his nerdy little trench coat and _those eyes_ , the feeling went away and Dean was forced to face the fact that, no, it wasn't normal to feel incomplete, and it certainly wasn't normal to only feel whole in the presence of one person. 

Then Lucifer rose and it was literally the end of the world and Dean didn't really have time to worry about trivial things such as his emotional stability or sanity. His inner turmoil drowned in the importance of the impending apocalypse and he managed to almost forget about it.

After Sammy feel into the cage and Castiel was apparently still not God, Dean went back to Lisa and was almost able to fool himself into thinking she could make him feel whole in the same way Cas could. But she couldn't and Dean got back to the hunting life as soon as he could.

When they found out about Cas' betrayal, it was the first time that Dean had felt incomplete in the angel's presence. Not just incomplete, but betrayed, broken. He hadn't known anything could hurt like that and he wanted it to _stop_. It didn't. If anything, it got so much worse when Castiel walked into that lake and didn't walk back out.

They found him again with the name Emmanuel but still those blue eyes, and the more cynical part of Dean didn't expect that feeling of being complete to come back. But sure enough, Cas- no, Emmanuel- met his eyes and there it was, not quite as strong as before, but still there and that was enough to give Dean hope.

Two years later, Cas was living with them in the bunker and Dean had never felt better. He had his brother alive and relatively well, he had Cas there and seemingly there to stay, and, best of all, it didn't seem like anyone was planning on ending the world that week. So yeah, pretty good on the Winchester scale.

He wasn't sure if it was the late hour or the three beers they had been or just the fact that he was giddy on rare joy, but something forced the words out of his mouth.

"Hey Cas?"

The angel look up at Dean as he unexpectedly broke the silence from where he was sprawled on the couch. Castiel looked up from where he sat on the love-seat with his typical, squinty gaze. Sam had long since gone to bed, but Dean was too tired to move and Castiel had accepted a while back that if he had a choice of where in the world to be, it was always going to be by Dean's side. 

"Yes Dean?"

"I- I've been meaning to ask you this for a while. Since we met actually," Dean stammered out, sitting up straighter. "I dunno, I guess there's never really been a good time to bring it up, but, well..."

Castiel stood up abruptly, coming to stand over Dean. The hunter moved his legs off the cushions and Cas sat down beside him. Dean gulped, hoping the close proximity wouldn't hinder his ability to speak even more.

"Dean, you know that you can tell me anything."

"Well, yeah, I know that, it's just, this isn't really easy to say." Dean stopped to rub the back of his neck awkwardly and tried to ignore the glint in Cas' eyes that looked a bit too much like hope. But what could he possibly be hoping for? "Ever since you pulled me out of Hell, I've been feeling, I dunno, not quite right, I guess? Not in like a 'I'm gonna go crazy and destroy the world' kind of way! Just in, you know, a 'I don't really feel complete sort of way'."

Castiel's face dropped instantly and he looked immeasurably sad and Dean would have given life and limb to erase that look. "I'm sorry, Dean. I have failed."

"No! No, Cas, you didn't fail." Dean inched closer, aiming to place his hand on Cas' shoulder but ending up a little too close to his neck instead.

"But you do not feel complete. I failed in bringing you back all the way."

"You didn't let me finish," Dean whispered. "I do feel complete sometimes. It's just... only when I'm around you." Cas looked back up at him, hopeful blue eyes meeting Dean's softly. "Why is that, Cas?"

Cas gulped and licked his lips, and Dean found himself tracking the movement. "I... I believe that when I put you together, it wasn't working too well at first. Your soul was fractured, broken, and it wasn't fitting too well when I tried to put it back together. So I used my grace as a sort of glue, to fix you. It is possible that usage has bound our souls to each other, a sort of terror, or mark, such as the one on your arm."

"Oh," Dean exhaled softly, never taking his eyes off Cas'. "I thought it was just because I was in love with you."

Cas gasped slightly, and they were frozen there for a moment, everything they needed in that small space between them. At the same time, as if on impulse, as if the parts of a soul they shared were magnets finally close enough to close the gap and connect, they moved forward and met in the middle. And right then, as Cas' lips landed on his, Dean felt more complete than he ever had before.


End file.
